Movie Moments That Piss You Off

What are moments that make you grit your teeth and even ruin films that you otherwise enjoy?

I have a couple from Titanic.

1. When Rose jumps out of the lifeboat. Ok you want to stay with your boyfriend, BUT SOMEONE ELSE COULD HAVE USED THAT SEAT! Or your boyfriend could have used that piece of wood to live and hooked up with you later.

2. Old Rose tosses the Hope Diamond in the ocean as a statement about classism. How about taking that priceless treasure and... I don't know... auction it for charity. Maybe give your grand daughter who's been taking care of you a taste.

2.

Heh, I definitely laughed my ass off when she threw thing in the ocean, I always wanted there to be a deleted scene where Bill Paxton sees her and goes apeshit. Still Titanic had so very many lame things in it that that was just icing on the cake.

I have a pretty long list myself.

1. LA Confidential - there is no fucking good excuse for a Noirish film to end like that one did, shot up to shit guy who smacked girlfriend rides off into literal sunset with same boyfriend. The way you end a Noir is accidentally killing your son mid-seduction before running off the money you wanted to steal from him.

2. The Game - Again the ending, he lives *and* it really was a game? You have got to be fucking kidding me.

3. Magnolia - raining frogs and forgivable molesters.

How was he forgiveable? His wife leaves him and runs to her daughter and the two of them end the movie together. There's nothing in the film that says he's forgiven or that Claudia should forgive him. He's an old man who's going to die alone with only his paid employees to take care of him.

You are not baiting me into watching that movie again!!

I think the movie was very much arguing that even molesters deserve a second chance, because their abominable acts aside, they're still human. His "aloneness" is filmed as some kind of epic tragedy, which it isn't, it's better than he deserves. That movie absolutely asked me to invest in the molester and understand *his* pain. Which what the fuck ever Anderson. I just could not buy what he was selling.

But within a film where we see second chances given to a multitude of characters who have done horrible things, I think the fact that Jimmy does end the film alone and miserable is noteable. He's not forgiven. Every other character in the film is given a final connection, a grace note. Earl sees his son. Claudia reconnects with her mother. John C. Reilly is allowed to finally do his job well and help William H. Macy. Jimmy gets nothing. I don't think a film showing a molester in all of his pathetic glory is asking you to feel bad for him.

Yeah, I'm with swsa on this one. He really is the "one of these things is not like the others" kid in the final montage.

My big pissed me off moment was the revelation that the man crying at the grave in Saving Private Ryan was Matt Damon, not Tom Hanks. Either a fairly huge editing gaffe or deliberate audience manipulation on Spielberg's part. Either way, I expected better from him (of course, that's my sentiment on the movie as a whole).

L.A. Confidential was noir? Hard-boiled, yes, but noir? I don't think so. Had it followed that path, the ending would have been a cheat. But it didn't, really.

You know, it's a good thing I had no internet connection or knew what fan fiction was in 1997, because I had this whole alternate ending worked out where Rose stayed in the stupid lifeboat and Jack floated on the door (or whatever that piece of wood was) and then he got picked up by Ioan Gruffudd in the one lifeboat that came back and they found each other on the Carpathia and lived happily ever after. (Shut up, I was a teenager!)

Another movie moment that made me angry was the way <<<Scott's death was handled in X-Men 3. No one even remembers to ask about his whereabouts for ages, and then it's practically an afterthought. This is Cyclops, for heaven's sake!>>>

Could you put that last paragraph in spoilers, Luthien? I realize I may be the last Snarker who hasn't actually seen X-Men 3, but just in case anyone else in that situation wanders in, you might want to save them that unexpected jolt.

Anytime animals/pets are presented just so that they can be killed off and elicit a cheap bit of emotion from the audience. Unless it is a romantic comedy, whenever someone in a movie has a pet, or a cute little doggie or kitty is introduced, chances are it will be killed. I hate this on so many levels and for so many reasons. Even if it's a good film, I just want to find the filmmakers and pimp slap them so hard that my handprint becomes the new Gucci.

Almost every scene with the friends/boyfriend in The Devil Wears Prada. What a bunch of whiny, immature crybabies with no understanding of how real jobs work.

Awww! I LOOOOOOOOVE this movie! The end is the most fucked up thing I've ever seen.

At a certain point one has to let spoiler bars go, lest we feel the need to spoil that Ilsa chooses Victor in "Casablanca".




The ending to "Dogma" irritated me to no end. Ben Affleck goes all evil and kills Matt Damon, God kills Ben Affleck, and Linda Fiorentino gets knocked up with the new Jesus. What?

The ending to "The Game" was horrendous. I would have kicked Sean Penn in the nuts and never spoken to him again.

The scene in As Good As It Gets when Melvin uses a bar of soap just once then throws it out. Just a small thing, but it bugs the shit out of me.

It's kinda supposed to, though, isn't it? Just "one more damn thing" about him.

Except that "Casablanca" came out 66 years ago, and "X Men 3" came out 18 months ago. This is honestly the first time I heard this particular plot point and I haven't exactly been hiding under a rock- just avoiding threads, reviews and news about released movies I haven't seen yet.

I also hate the end to LA Confidential. It needed to end with the shot of Guy Pierce holding up his badge. That would have rocked.

I think it would have been a whole lot more fucked up had he actually died, with that ending they blew what small sliver of believability I was floating to them out of the water. And yes the appropriate response was to kick Sean Penn in the nads.

Well, I don't think I'm alone in thinking so, lots of people perceived it as a neo-Noir film, and not without good sound reason. Until the end of course which throws that right out the damn window, besides which any ending in which Bud turns into the Terminator and can survive untold bullet holes to his body and gets to drive off into the sunset with the woman he smacked isn't gonna sit well with me, no matter what.

I should point out that the ending to L.A. Confidential came straight out of the book, so fingers should be pointed at James Ellroy, not the filmmakers.

Ironically, the whole Guy Pearce shoots Farmer Hoggett in the back thing, which most people cite as supremely more noirish and bad ass, was not in the book. Farmer Hoggett lives and Guy Pearce dedicates himself to bringing him down after saying good-bye to Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger and letting them drive off to Arizona.

Y'all can accuse Ellroy of pussying out, but you would be braver folks than I.

There's an actual sunset in the book?

Well, I don't think I'm alone in thinking so, lots of people perceived it as a neo-Noir film, and not without good sound reason. Until the end of course which throws that right out the damn window, besides which any ending in which Bud turns into the Terminator and can survive untold bullet holes to his body and gets to drive off into the sunset with the woman he smacked isn't gonna sit well with me, no matter what.

That Salon piece uses circular reasoning -- this noir movie doesn't use any of that subgenre's usual cinematic flourishes, and thus fails as noir -- which falls apart the minute you stop assuming it's supposed to be noir in the first place. The ending (which, yes, is antithetical to noir) is supported over and over by the film's repeated grasping at hope through the mud of cynicism. If Exley had just been about advancement, or if Vincennes hadn't had a change of heart, or if White hadn't made up with Basinger's hooker (who's not much of a femme fatale -- a pretty important element in noir), maybe. But the movie is all about making things better. Noir films typically enjoy things staying bad.

But I'm with you on White's superhuman endurance. That is one tough fella. Riiiight.

I enjoyed Guy Pearce shooting Farmer Hoggett in the back, but it did strike me as the most Hollywood-y change to the book. Audiences expect films to have closure, so you can't have the bad guy running around unpunished.

As for Bud White and the hooker going away together, there were film noirs that had romatic endings. I think it was "Murder, My Sweet" that had Dick Powell riding off in the back of a cab with his little sexpot, too.

While there have been oceans of ink spilled about how much the "Star Wars" prequels sucked, one thing from "The Phantom Menace" made me want to jump up and throw my drink at the screen:

Midichlorians.

Forget The Force being a mystical energy field that binds all living things together. It's something you can take a blood test for. Jesus.

Midichlorians are not the Force. They are microscopic organisms that allow a larger living organism to connect with and manipulate the Force. Yes, that means that not just anyone can become a Jedi, that only special people can. But that's true in the original trilogy as well. The only difference is that there is an observable, scientifically measurable phenomenon for determing who has the potential to Use the Force. The Force is still "a mystical energy field that binds all living things together", and one of those "living things" is something that allows another living thing to interact with the Force directly.

The entirety of Paparazzi. I'm not one who demands a very high moral code from my cinema, but I was really put off by something so ugly trying to be such a crowd pleaser. I wasn't able to even able to be amused by the folly they thought they could sell a film with Fox News justice with main characters in the entertainment industry.